February 2, 2018

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203-206, B – Wing, Mittal Commercia, Asan Pada Rd, Mittal Industrial Estate, Marol, Sakinaka, Mumbai

Maharashtra

India

In a first of its kind - ION Energy, a company building high performance, no-compromise energy storage systems and electric vehicle infrastructure, announced today that it has acquired the French battery management company, Freemens SAS. As part of the Cash + Equity transaction, the entire Freemens engineering and sales team will join the core team of ION.

 

HQ’d out of Grenoble, France - Freemens is a leading provider and pioneer building cutting edge battery management systems for Lithium-Ion batteries. Alexandre Collet, Founder and CEO of Freemens SAS has now officially joined ION as Co-Founder & VP of Engineering to strengthen the founding team of ION Energy. After his masters degree from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, he spent 2 yrs with his PhD research professor making groundbreaking inventions in power electronics architecture, Lithium-Ion cell aging factors and state identification. Their innovations and breakthroughs in life extension of Lithium-Ion batteries led to the founding of Freemens in 2011.

 

Freemens will continue working with their current clients which include Airbus Safran, CarWatt, NTN SNR and 20+ others. With the acquisition, ION will invest into this business and grow the portfolio of customers in India, US & other parts of EU.

 

“Our acquisition of Freemens is reflective of ION’s growth and vision. In an increasingly crowded market, Freemens’ unparalleled Battery Management know-how has helped ION leap forward in sync with our mission to build reliable, high performance & no-compromise energy storage systems. I’m incredibly excited to welcome Alex and Freemens onboard our journey.”

 

• Akhil Aryan, Co-Founder & CEO @ ION Energy

 

 

The entire team of PhDs in France have spent the last 7 years perfecting their understanding of various Lithium-Ion batteries and optimizing their ability to reduce degradation of these sensitive batteries by controlling the brain that manages them in real time. Their products are chemistry agnostic and work with all the various chemistries including NCA, NMC, LFP and more. As companies line up to offer systems and startups enter the space, it is important to bulk up on technical capabilities and meet increasing qualitative expectations. With the Freemens team onboard, ION has distinguished itself in this respect.

 

“It is clear that batteries will be core to the transition away from fossil fuels. When I heard about ION and Akhil’s plan to build No-Compromise storage systems, it reminded me of why I started Freemens in the first place. Partnering with ION gives us the firepower to address a much larger market and increase our ability to service existing customers. Together we will build some deep technology to disrupt both the EV and energy storage markets.”

 

• Alexandre Collet, Co-Founder & VP of Engineering @ ION Energy  (Former CEO of Freemens SAS)